France is debating a bill that pits Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch against representatives of creators. Adopted by the Senate on April 8, 2026, the text is due to be examined in the National Assembly, where its review has been postponed to November 19.
Introduced by Senators Laure Darcos (Essonne, Les Indépendants – République et Territoires group), Agnès Evren (Paris, LR) and Pierre Ouzoulias (Hauts-de-Seine, PCF), the bill aims to establish a “presumption of use of cultural content” by AI providers. Submitted in December 2025, it was adopted almost in its original wording. Its main provision stipulates that an AI system is presumed to have exploited a work “whenever an indication relating to the development or deployment of that system or the result generated by it makes such exploitation plausible“.
A Presumption Criticized by the Industry
A few weeks before the vote, Arthur Mensch had suggested another approach: the creation of a “European fund for creation”, to which AI model providers would contribute proportionally to their turnover. The Mistral CEO clarified that this mechanism would not replace licensing agreements or “direct relationships” between creators and providers. He saw it, however, as providing “legal certainty”, unlike an opt-out regime, i.e., voluntary withdrawal by rights holders, which he deemed “impossible to implement in practice”.
The Publishers Association in the UK had reacted to these remarks. Its executive director stated that Arthur Mensch assumed tech companies had the right to use whatever they wanted without permission, “and ask for forgiveness afterwards”. He invited Mistral to pay for commercial licenses, “as it pays its employees or its electricity bills”.
Arthur Mensch laments that a presumption triggered by a mere indication reverses the burden of proof. According to him, proving that a work was not used would require, on a corpus of billions of words, revealing industrial secrets. He acknowledges that the presumption is rebuttable, meaning it can be overturned, and limited to civil matters, but he believes proving a negative without disclosing one’s methods is impossible at the scale of training a frontier model.
Rights Holders Demand Licenses
In an op-ed co-signed by SACEM, SNE and SACD, representatives of culture and information assert that “France does not have to choose between technological power and cultural power”. According to these signatories, AI providers should not fear a proliferation of lawsuits or damage to business secrecy, two risks that Arthur Mensch says he fears.
Laure Darcos responds that France should not reject all regulation, while “even the Americans are asking questions”. She believes business secrecy cannot excuse a violation of the fundamental right of property, and states that “judges will know how to ensure confidentiality”. Her colleague Laurent Lafon (Union centriste et Indépendants, Val-de-Marne) speaks of a “rearguard action”, and mentions California, which has begun legislating on AI development.
At the ARP Film Meetings, Xavier Bertrand, President of the Hauts-de-France Region, expressed his support for the bill. Isabelle Degeorges, President of Gaumont Télévision, is opposed to the European fund. “Creators are not beggars,” she said, calling for “the works used to be declared” and for “licenses to be negotiated”. According to Blaise Mistler, Director of Institutional Relations at SACEM, rights holders have “done part”, notably by initiating discussions with Mistral, “without managing to open real license negotiations”.
An Amendment to Restrict the Scope of the Text
In the National Assembly, MP Éric Bothorel (Côtes-d’Armor, affiliated with the Ensemble pour la République group, formerly Renaissance) proposed replacing “system” with “model” in the text, which would exclude downstream players. His amendment, “worked on with the French Telecoms Federation”, was rejected by the Committee on Cultural Affairs, Education and Sport, as were his other amendments. He considers the scope of application “too broad and unjustified”.
A deletion amendment, echoing the arguments of the National Bar Council, recalls the existence of a European framework “already harmonized and fully applicable”, notably the DAMUN Directive (2019/790) and the AI Act. Éric Bothorel also believes the criterion of “an indication making it plausible” is “broad and imprecise”. The Ensemble pour la République group has also submitted 110 amendments, most of which bear the signature of Prisca Thevenot (Hauts-de-Seine).
